About choices

Still trying to get over Strep. For some reason over the past few years I've become a veritable breeding ground for strep. Ugh! I got some sweet gifts for mother's day from the kids and stopped after church to treat myself and Gabby to lunch at BK. Guess what?! They have Star Trek glasses. Lunch was lousy and they only have one ebola seat, I mean public high chair, so Gabby had to sit on my lap and needless to say it was mercifully quick. But hey, I am now the proud owner of both the Kirk and Uhurra glasses. They are gen-you-wine cheap glass not plastic too! woo hoo!

So last night in between fighting the dark forces of strep and handling my piranha of a toddler, I got my work done for Starting Point this morning and managed to get through telling my "story" today without losing it too much. We later discussed brokenness and it was, as always, quite a riveting discussion. The time really does seem to fly in there.

The question was raised as to why God placed the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden if he did not want man to partake of it. One of our members pointed out that love is a choice. Interesting. When we love anybody or anything we are choosing to love them. Would you really want to be "loved" by someone who had no choice in the matter? Isn't that just mere obedience?

I guess this really describes so much of what is going on in the world. For some of us the choices seem so easy and natural that they don't seem like choices. Do we even realize that we are choosing to love that fragile baby we hold in our arms for the first time? Most of us felt a rush of love somewhere in those first few moments, days or weeks when we've met our children. Is that the moment we've made our choice? Some people would credit the hormone surge most new moms have with these intense emotions. Maybe so. Is it possible that God's hand is in that surge making our choice so easy? It's only when we start controlling things after that, that things become so complicated. Also, it's unfortunate that not everyone makes what seems like the easy choice. Then again what's so easy about sleepless nights, constant worry about the status of our children's health and happiness?

Anyway, we also quickly revisited the image of the X-structure at the center of the whirlpool galaxy as taken by the Hubble telescope as shown above. If you are interested in any of the background of this, check out this video by Louie Giglio where he talks about how he feels about it: here. Hard not to see the Hand of God in that. I mean, it's no Star Trek glass, but it sure is something to ponder.....